Katie Holmes

CHICAGO – Adam Sandler has become such a lazy filmmaker that he’s now just building films around his personal vacation schedule. He wanted to take an outdoors-y vacation with his friends and the result was “Grown Ups.” He wanted to go to Hawaii and the result was “Just Go With It.” He wanted to take a cruise and we have to sit through “Jack and Jill.”

CHICAGO – Just as Peter Jackson’s adaptation of “The Lovely Bones” suffered from visual over-saturation, writer/producer Guillermo del Toro’s remake of John Newland’s 1973 TV movie succumbs to ineffectual excess. As soon as its fearsome creatures appear for longer than a flash frame, they instantly lose their scare-factor. Didn’t del Toro and his crew learn anything from “Signs”?

CHICAGO – No one will ever accuse Adam Sandler of not knowing his audience and the reason they keep coming back to his “Happy Madison” genre of films – he delivers the oddball characters, lots of bodily fluids/sounds, physical beatings and the know-it-all straight man. Add the gooey sentiment and out spews the latest, “Jack and Jill.”

Rating: 2.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Director Dito Montiel and star Channing Tatum were once tagged with the label of the hot new debut artistic partnership. 2006’s great “A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints” introduced both men to the world and it felt like it could be the calling card for a creative team to someday rival Scorsese & De Niro. Tatum reunited with Montiel on the disappointing “Fighting” and their latest venture, “The Son of No One,” while an improvement on Montiel’s sophomore slump, is nonetheless another misfire.

CHICAGO – In our latest police thriller edition of HollywoodChicago.com Hookup: Film, we have 40 admit-two movie passes up for grabs to the advance Chicago screening of “The Son of No One” starring Channing Tatum and Al Pacino!

CHICAGO – Echoing elements of masterful works by Producer Guillermo Del Toro (most notably “The Devil’s Backbone,” “Pan’s Labyrinth”), “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark” is an incredibly frustrating remake, a film that reminds one of scary movies instead of actually producing scares itself.

CHICAGO – In our latest horror/thriller edition of HollywoodChicago.com Hookup: Film, we have 40 admit-two passes up for grabs to the advance Chicago screening of Guillermo del Toro’s highly anticipated “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark” starring Katie Holmes and Guy Pearce!

CHICAGO – The History Channel made headlines when it announced it was developing a mini-series called “The Kennedys” about the legendary family and even more of them when it dropped the finished product amidst rumors that some actual Kennedys had pressured them to do so. After other networks reportedly passed on the 8-part historical dramatization, it fell to the Reelz Channel.

CHICAGO – In this edition of the HollywoodChicago.com Hookup: DVD, one lucky winner will clean up with three DVDs from Magnolia Pictures for the movies “The Great Buck Howard,” “What Just Happened” and “Finding Amanda” plus a full-size poster for “The Extra Man” signed by filmmaker Shari Springer Berman and stars Kevin Kline and Paul Dano!

CHICAGO – The beauty of watching creative character actors like Kevin Kline and John C. Reilly is that they seem to revel in the craft of embodying their roles. In “The Extra Man,” they both take a trippy and literate script and apply some additional magic that helps to flesh out a young man’s journey into the heart of Manhattan.